26 The Peace of Nicias

In 421 B.C., the Athenian comic playwright Aristophanes staged Peace, in which he voiced his relief at the apparent end of the Peloponnesian War. The peace treaty negotiated over the winter of 422−421 B.C., though, was not to last long. Thucydides, then an exile at Sparta, witnessed the ratification of the peace, followed by the formal establishment of an alliance between Athens and Sparta that was supposed to last 50 years. King Pleistoanax, who had been exiled in 446 B.C. for preferring negotiation to battle, won over the majority of the gerousia and ephors to end the fighting. Nicias, for his part, feared risking his reputation with further fighting, and aspired to the role of a Periclean benefactor in an Athens at peace. The Spartans agreed to return Amphipolis and to give Athens a free hand to put down rebel cities in the Chalcidice in exchange for the release of the prisoners captured at Sphacteria and withdrawal from the fort at Pylos. The Spartans, however, could not force Amphipolis to return to Athenian rule. Further, because the treaty failed to address the demands of Sparta’s allies, it was rejected by the Corinthians, Megarians, and Boeotians. The Spartans concluded an alliance (symmachia) with Athens, seeking to intimidate the allies into compliance, but this move instead drove the Corinthians to intrigue with other dissident allies, and prompted Argos to undermine the peace over the coming year.